Justice Action Alert: Defend Our Public Lands

From JUUstice Washington, a UU Action Network:

In following through on our collective commitment to Defend Against the Assault on Environmental Protections: Public Lands Rules and the Endangerment Finding, we invite you to join us on taking the following actions.  If you want to contribute to the content of any public land actions, use our form.

Each of these is CRITICAL!  Please take sometime to address all of them.

• Comment on Chaco Buffer Zone Withdrawal Due July 29, 2026

• Comment on Changes to USFS Manuals and Handbooks Due July 31, 2026

• Oppose the Fix Our Forests Act

• Oppose the Wildfire Prevention Act

• Respond to Bears Ears/Grand Staircase-Escalante Reduction

In all things related to actions concerning our public lands, we're asking that you take a few minutes to actually write a comment or a letter.  Signing petitions is no longer an effective means to have your voice counted.  A petition receives the weight of "1" even if there are 100,000 signatures on it.  Your individually-written, personal communications will have the weight of "1+."  Speak personally about why this issue is important to you.  These action items are open to all regardless if you're in the area being impacted.  Feel free to pass along to friends, associates, families, allies and partners.  We need as many voices as can be raised.

Below are the action items we need to move on.  Links are provided to documents that will give you some background information on what the issue is, who's involved in the issue, resources that you can refer to, talking points that you can use and more. 

Please feel free to:

Comment on Chaco Culture Historical Park Buffer Zone

Comments due by July 29, 2026

The documentation and instructions for commenting on the withdrawal of the buffer zone around the Chaco Culture Historical Park are here.

The Bureau of Land Management wants to remove a 10-mile buffer zone from around the park so they can exploit fossil fuel and uranium deposits that surround the park.

Pueblo indigenous communities are in support of maintaining the buffer zone while Navajos of the eastern agency in support of removing the buffer zone. 

Comment on Changes to USFS Manuals and Handbooks 

Comments due by July 31, 2026

The documentation and instructions for commenting on the withdrawal of the buffer zone around the USFS Manuals and Handbooks are here.

The US Forest Service has proposed a change that would remove public commenting on changes to the Service's Handbooks.  It is in the Handbooks where the instructions and guidance for implementing programs. 

To elimiate commenting on changes in the handbooks, significantly narrows the kinds of projects that the public can have some say in.  The rule change also significantly narrows when the Service must engage in consultation with the Tribes on projects

Oppose the Wildfire Prevention Act

The documentation and instructions for opposing the Wildfire Prevention Act are here.

The Wildfire Prevention Act is waiting in the Senate.  The Act has several issues but the most glaring of these is the move to permanently eliminate the Roadless Rule.

The Act would permanently eliminate the Roadless Rule and ban the ability to create anything else like it.  It would prevent agency leads and the courts from restoring it.  Only another to restore it is through an Act of Congress signed by the President.

The Act also increase the number projects that will bypass or will be streamlined in the environmental review process, significantly increase timber harvesting by 40% by 2029, reduces Tribal consultation and does not address climate change or tthe real causes of wildfires. 

This bill also has a companion bill in the House.  Use your comments to oppose H.R. 7695-To provide that the final rule titled "Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation.  It also eliminates the Roadless Rule but goes on to authorize the Secretary to build permanent and temporary roads and replace decommissioned roads and further states that road construction will still require environmental reviews unless a “categorical exclusion” can be applied to the project.  It further grants authority to build these roads in at-risk communities, wildland-urban interface and municipal watersheds.  

Respond to Bears Ears/Grand Staircase-Escalante Reduction 

The documentation and instructions for responding to the reduction of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments are here. 

On July 13, 2026, the current administration stripped nearly 3 million acres from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, “nearly ninety percent of the two monuments combined, leaving barely a tenth of what stood this morning.”  The justification was that the contents of these two monuments were "generic" and didn't qualify for monument status and economic and national security reasons because of "several critical minerals" within them.